凯鲁亚克于1948年提出“垮掉的一代(Beat Generation)”这一说法,概括了当时他社交圈中的聚集在纽约底层且具有反从众特质的年轻人们。这一称呼在他与小说家约翰·克莱伦·霍姆斯的对话中也有出现。约翰·克莱伦·霍姆斯发表了最早的一部关于垮掉的一代的小说——《Go(英语:Go (Holmes novel))》(1952年)——并在《纽约时报杂志》发出了“This Is the Beat Generation(这就是垮掉的一代)”宣言[1]。1954年,诺兰·米勒(英语:Nolan Miller (author))出版了他的第三部小说《Why I Am So Beat(为何我如此潦倒)》,详细描述了四个学生的周末派对。
凯鲁亚克的这一段话后来被发表在文章《垮掉的一代的起源(The Origins of the Beat Generation)》(Playboy,1959年6月)中。那篇文章提到,凯鲁亚克最初的“垮掉哲学(beatific philosophy)”已经被许多专家策略式地忽略,以改变凯鲁亚克关于笑话和行话的概念:
第一部对垮掉派社会进行描述的电影大概是1949年由鲁道夫·马特(英语:Rudolph Maté)导演的电影《當場斃命》。电影中的主角前往一个吵闹的旧金山酒吧时,遇到一个女人向音乐家大喊:“酷!酷!真酷!(Cool! Cool! Really cool!)”其中一个角色说:“哥们,我是不是很有范儿(Man, am I really hip)”另一人回答说:“你(从之前默默无闻)一下子一鸣惊人了!(You’re from nowhere, nowhere!)”舞者们随着节奏翩翩起舞。一些舞者穿戴着首饰,并有着超前于时代的发型。在电影中,1940年代的典型打扮与披头族的风格的穿着相互夹杂,例如某男性戴着披头族的帽子,留着长头发、髭和山羊胡,但仍然穿着西式正装。一位调酒师管一位顾客叫“Jive Crazy(捷舞疯子)”;对于音乐的讨论让粉丝们开始疯狂。于是他让其中一个人“冷静一下”,但是那人回答道,“别管我。我(的激情)正被点燃!(Oh don’t bother me, man. I’m being enlightened!)”
另一部牵涉到披头族文化的是在1959年的《一桶鲜血(英语:A Bucket of Blood)》,由查尔斯·B·格里菲斯(英语:Charles B. Griffith)创作,罗杰·科曼导演。在电影中,咖啡厅的一位服务员助理为了取得披头族赞助者团体的认同,用死亡的动物或人体来进行雕塑创作。电影中另一位具有影响力的角色是披头族诗人,是他说服了这个团体将这位服务员助理视为一位值得注意的艺术家。艺术家在得到团体的认同后,团体中的一位仰慕他的女性粉丝暗中给了他一小瓶海洛因;这也隐喻了吸毒是披头族文化中可以接受,甚至是必要的一部分。电影的配乐采用了炫酷的、以铜管为基础的爵士乐,也有用原声吉他伴奏的人声演唱。摇滚乐在电影中没有出现,即使它当时已经开始流行,并且在某一方面也反文化。一种可能性是,人们认为摇滚和事不关己、低调、虚无的垮掉派社会态度大相径庭。
^原文:The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clellon Holmes and I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late Forties, of a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way—a vision gleaned from the way we had heard the word "beat" spoken on street corners on Times Square and in the Village, in other cities in the downtown city night of postwar America—beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction. We'd even heard old 1910 Daddy Hipsters of the streets speak the word that way, with a melancholy sneer. It never meant juvenile delinquents, it meant characters of a special spirituality who didn't gang up but were solitary Bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization...[4][5]
^原文:It is because I am Beat, that is, I believe in beatitude and that God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son to it... Who knows, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty?[6]
^原文:I went one afternoon to the church of my childhood and had a vision of what I must have really meant with "Beat"... the vision of the word Beat as being to mean beatific... People began to call themselves beatniks, beats, jazzniks, bopniks, bugniks, and finally I was called the "avatar" of all this.
^原文:If beatniks and not illuminated Beat poets overrun this country, they will have been created not by Kerouac but by industries of mass communication which continue to brainwash man.[10]
^原文:Much of Beat culture represented a negative stance rather than a positive one. It was animated more by a vague feeling of cultural and emotional displacement, dissatisfaction, and yearning, than by a specific purpose or program... It was many different, conflicting, shifting states of mind.[11]
参考资料
^John Clellon Holmes. This Is The Beat Generation. www.litkicks.com. New York Times Magazine. 1952-11-16 [2018-04-11]. (原始内容存档于2011-11-22).
^Charters, edited by Ann. The portable Jack Kerouac Pbk. New York, N.Y., U.S.A.: Penguin Books. 2007. ISBN 014310506X.使用|accessdate=需要含有|url= (帮助)